Friday, March 13, 2009

D-B Beats Kingston in 6 Overtimes in '63 State Tournament - Or Was It 5 Overtimes?

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Freedom Hall's Golden Age of Rock : The Seventies (Note this is Freedom Hall in Johnson City, Tennessee NOT Louisville, Ky.!!)

When it opened in the summer of 1974 Johnson City's Freedom Hall rocked.

Okay, the first act didn’t rock: that was comedian Bob Hope who opened Freedom Hall on July 5, 1974. But he was certainly a big name act. And by fall 1974 the place was jumping from all the rock and rollers rumbling through: Alice Cooper, KISS, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Doobie Brothers, Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt, REO Speedwagon, Charlie Daniels Band, Marshall Tucker Band. And that was just the first year!

The seventies were probably the golden age of rock and roll tours. And when Freedom Hall opened we finally got our own arena in upper east Tennessee. We no longer had to drive to Knoxville or Asheville or Charlotte to see big name acts. They came here: Elvis! The Eagles! Bruce Springsteen! The Beach Boys! Tom Jones! Engelbert Humperdinck!

You should have been here.

David Miller and I, who attended many, many of those shows, have been scouring old issues of the Times News to come up with this list of all the big name acts that played at Freedom Hall in the seventies. By our count there were 183 big time acts who played Freedom Hall in that five year period! I can’t promise it’s complete but it’s close. I have included ticket prices where we could find them.

(This post is about Freedom Hall in Johnson City, Tennessee not Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.)

Rock and roll didn’t suddenly cease coming to Freedom Hall with the advent of the eighties. Alice Cooper, AC/DC, Van Halen and Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons all performed in 1980. But David and I had to draw the line somewhere. If you want a list of eighties acts, you’ll have to make your own. Count on spending four hours per year searching microfilm.